THE STORY OF ABE.
Those who profess to know all about slavery will tell you that the negro was a thousand times happier as a slave than he is as a freeman. This may be true of some of the race; we do not enter into the question. The field-hand was in general an entirely irresponsible creature. He belonged to his master as thoroughly as the dogs and horses did, and he was of infinitely less importance. He had his daily task and his daily rations; he had also, if owned by a kind master, his little amusements, chief of which were the dance and the camp-meeting. Such a life would naturally not inspire one with any very high ambition. Give the plantation negro his hoe-cake and his bit of fat pork, his banjo, and the privilege of telling his experience to an unlimited chorus of ‘Halleluiahs!’ and ‘Bress de Lords!’ and you gave him perfect bliss. If the white man was his oppressor, he seldom knew it. ‘De family’ were, except in rare cases, admired and revered. And these poor creatures who did not own themselves, assumed and felt an air of proud proprietorship when speaking of the glories of their master’s state, and specially of each ‘young mas’r’ and ‘lily miss.’ ‘Young mas’r’ was at once their tyrant and their darling. I have heard a wedding ceremony wound up with, ‘Hark, from de tombs a doleful sound!’ with all its concomitant tears and groans, because ‘Marse Harry’ had so ordered.
This state of things by no means came to an end with the civil war. Long after the slaves were freemen, and the broad acres had changed owners, and ‘old mas’r’ had fallen in battle or died broken-hearted, all that were left of the proud old name were still ‘de family’ to those loving hearts. While the writer lived in one of the border towns of Virginia, the mother of one of her maids appeared one day to ask for largess. ‘We’se done goin’ to hab a party, Miss Anne,’ said she; ‘an’ some ob de ladies dey gibs me flour; an’ some, eggs; an’ some, sugar; an’ ole missis she would a’ gib me a whole great big cake, but I up an’ tole her I had one.—It was a lie,’ she explained earnestly, fearing I would think further gifts unnecessary; ‘but some o’ dem pore white trash say de missis hain’t got nuff to eat.’ And Chloe fairly sobbed.
I ventured to ask the occasion of the festivity.
‘Well, ye see, Miss Anne,’ said Chloe, brightening, ‘us cullud pussons is gettin’ married now just like white folks; an’ as my ole mammy ’ll be eighty the day after to-morrow, Marse George said I had oughter gib her an’ father a weddin’.’
Better late than never, thought I, as I added something to Chloe’s basket.
In addition to the plantation negroes and the often petted and spoiled household servants, there was among the coloured population of the South a certain proportion of skilled mechanics. These were not only, from their superior intelligence, more alive than the rest of their race to the hardship of slavery, but, from their greater value, more apt to suffer from it. Why, for instance, should Jim, a good blacksmith, trifle his time away on the plantation, where there was little or nothing for him to do, when Smith in the adjacent town will give Jim’s master, always in need of money, handsome payment for the slave’s services? The master is perhaps a kind man, and Smith known to be just the reverse, but hiring is not like selling. And so Jim goes, and toils in the sweat of his brow till Smith’s payment to the master is wrung out from him a thousandfold.
It is of one of these mechanics I am going to tell you, and, excepting that the names of the persons connected with the story have been changed, every word of Abe’s story is true.
In the heart of West Virginia, on the picturesque banks of the Great Kanawha River, there is a large tract of land once owned by Washington. Besides the niece who afterwards became Mrs Parke Custis, Washington had another in whom he was greatly interested, the daughter of his brother Lawrence. This lady, much against the wishes of her distinguished uncle, became the wife of Major Parks of Baltimore; and when this gallant officer, fulfilling Washington’s predictions, had spent all he could lay his hands upon and a great deal more, the couple, for his sins, were banished to what was then the wilderness of Western Virginia. Their daughter in course of time married Mr Prescott, a rich young planter from the east, whose money, laid out on the Washington acres, produced a flourishing plantation; while on one of the most romantic sites on the Kanawha arose a noble mansion known as Prescott Place. Here Mrs Prescott exercised for years a lavish hospitality; and here were preserved, until fire consumed them and the mansion together, sundry relics of Washington, chief of which was a characteristic letter to his niece, written before her marriage, warning her that as she made her bed, so she should lie upon it.
When young Laura Prescott married gay Dick Randolph, Abe, the son of Mr Prescott’s body-servant, was one of numerous presents of like kind. Abe was an excellent carpenter; and when dark days came to the Prescotts and Randolphs, it was Abe himself who persuaded ‘Marse Dick’ to sell him to a man from the north named Hartley, who from being a slave-driver had risen to be a slave-owner, and who had the reputation of being a very demon. Again and again Hartley offered a tempting price, and again and again Dick Randolph refused it; nor would he have yielded at last, hard pressed as he was, had he not felt that Abe, being about to be hired to a builder in the neighbourhood, would be really out of Hartley’s power. And when, some months after the sale, Abe walked over to Prescott Place to tell that his new master was going to allow him to purchase his freedom by working over-hours, Mr Randolph felt quite at ease about the faithful fellow. A price being set by Hartley, Abe set himself cheerfully to earn it—for years commencing his day’s work with the dawn, and carrying it far into the night.